Stage verdant, greens and trees and hills. Daytime in all scenes. (Trixie: please check if there is at least two, or three, among the participants who do the gimbal, or drums. Let ‘em check on indigenous gimbal beat from Northern Philippines)

M: Apo a Kabunian!Lagip degdegam!

K1:Lagip degdegam,O Apomi a Kabunian!

K2:Lagip degdegam,Lumawig umaykan!

K3:Pakasaritaan itdem kadakam,Apo Lung-aw a kadaklan!

M:Bay-anyo a didiosenA ni Lam-ang lagipen!

K1, K2, K3:Ni Lam-ang a lagipenBay-anyo a didiosen!

M:Kabunian!

K1:Lumawig!

K2:Lung-aw!

Enters NL, Lam-ang’s mother, heavy with child. TL dances the war dance. All koro will dance with them later on. Heavy beating of gimbal. Stage full with people. Occupy stage below. Spread out with the audience.

To Dream Again the American Dream—The Case of Undocumented Students of Hawaii

By Aurelio Solver Agcaoili

There is a proposed legislation in the House of Representatives that has gained some discussion and controversy during the last few days: HB 1457, HD 1.

At a March 30 Senate confirmation hearing for nominees to the board of regents of the University of Hawaii, the issue came up time and again, putting into the limelight the plight of college-age and college-bound indocumentados—the undocumented young people—of Hawaii.

Described as a proposed law that “extends eligibility for state financial aid and resident tuition to students of the University of Hawaii without lawful immigration status who meet certain specified criteria,” HB 1457 looks straight into the very heart of access to education and boldly stipulates what needs to be done with the blessings of the law and the ascendant fairness of our moral action to share the magnanimity of our heart with those who have less in our Hawaii collective life.

The Immigration and Naturalization Act, a federal law, grants individual states the right to enact laws that benefit immigrant people who do not have lawful immigrant status so they can have access to public resources.

These public resources include education, state scholarships, and funding for college-related training.

The end-point, as in the federal DREAM Act—Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors—is to make education available to all.

The federal proposal introduced in the United States Senate on August 2001 by Senators Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch, and reintroduced on May 11, 2011, would pave the way for some of the qualified young people to have become conditional permanent residents, and then, after fulfilling other requirements of the law, would be given temporary permanent residency, prior to being given a permanent residency after fulfilling certain conditions.

Permanent residency is one of the requirements for acquiring citizenship.

The Hawaii version of the DREAM Act—now popularly known as Hawaii DREAM Act-spins off from the vision of the federal legislative proposal and in its language, invests on the need to address with urgency the need for an educated population in the state.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, in its statement of support, speaks of the Hawaii DREAM Act as a legislative proposal that will “allow certain qualified young people who possess limitless potential to contribute to our society and provide them with a path to citizenship after higher education.”

The ACLU letter of support crafted by Lurie A. Temple, a staff attorney of the non-profit organization that has fought for the civil rights of the people of the state for the last 40 years, argues that the proposed law is “consistent with American values” as it aims to assure the protection of the “rights of vulnerable immigrant communities” and the giving to the young people “access to higher education.”

Citing a 1982 Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe, ACLU speaks of the potential benefits of having an educated population especially so when such members of the population become citizens themselves.

The Supreme Court has expressed a perspective to rethinking about this case of the indocumentados, says ACLU, and quotes the decision, thus: “the illegal alien of today may well be the legal alien of tomorrow…[w]ithout education, the undocumented children, [a]lready disadvantaged as a result of poverty, lack of English-speaking ability, and undeniable racial prejudices,…will become permanently locked into the lowest socio-economic class.”

It is this underclass, currently invisible, and rendered so by the legal institution, that the Hawaii DREAM Act seeks to make visible, and pave a road for their education and training so that in the end they become productive residents of the state.

Catherine Betts, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women, supports the proposed legislative measure on behalf of the commission.

Among others objectives, HB 1457, enables students to go to college within the University of Hawaii system, apply for scholarships, apply for financial aid, and pay tuition based on their being regarded as residents of the state.

Betts writes that “immigrant students who are high achieving and talented should not be forced to bear an unequal burden simply because they want to obtain a college education. These students often already face various problems, including financial barriers to higher education, fear of deportation and inability to secure gainful employment—all because of their legal status. Providing eligibility to secure state financial aid or tuition waivers is an investment in our state’s future.”

Betts recalls of her “humbling opportunity to meet with undocumented students from California” that shared with her of their stories of constant fear of police officers, their fear of being deported, and their fear of going back to an unknown land only their parents know. The same students spoke of their dreams of obtaining a college degree, a dream that has but become less and less within their reach because of legal constraints.

In Hawaii, we have a share of these indocumentados, and the sooner we give them access to resources that will turn them into educated residents, the better will be for the state’s economic life.

While the estimate of those who will benefit from this measure vary, with some estimates approximating in the hundreds while others a few thousand students, the socio-economic benefits of giving education access to these young people will far outweigh the initial financial cost the state will shoulder.

Amy Agbayani, co-chair of the Hawaii Friends of Civil Rights, argues for the need to give access to immigrants as potential productive residents and citizens. A naturalized citizen herself, she speaks of the urgency of looking into the plight of college-bound students with unlawful immigrant status, and provide for a way to retain them in college, and equip them with life-long learning and professional skills.

The alliances of civic and cultural organizations of Oahu and of the state, through their respective presidents, have given full support for the measure. Maria Etrata, president of Oahu Filipino Community Council, speaks of “disenfranchised” young people, and the need to give them hope, and make them part of the Hawaii community.

Lynne Gutierrez, president of the United Filipino Council of Hawaii and a recently retired public school teacher, speaks of HB 1457 as a humanitarian gesture that “would open the doors to an invisible but vital segment of Hawaii’s youth.” She believes that this measure would help strengthen Hawaii society and help propel its economy.

The idea that education is an investment is echoed in the support written by Agnes Malate of the Filipinos for Affirmative Action. Malate argues that if we want to be true to our claim of this century as “American Century,” we must look at education as an investment that benefits all. We want to be leaders in industry, the arts, technology, the sciences, research, and innovation, she continues, we weed to invest in education and this investment in education must be made available for all.

This is the same reasoning that Beatriz Ramos-Razon, president and founder of Nursing Advocates and Mentors Inc., follows in giving her support for HB 1457.

NAMI is a group of health care professionals and volunteers advocating for public health education, access to resources in health care, and re-training of health care professionals educated outside the United States. She writes: “Our state government and economy have the most to gain with highly educated, highly skilled, and highly motivated students who can help navigate Hawaii toward a resilient recovery.”

In her support for the measure, Charlene Cuaresma, past president of the Filipino Coalition for Solidarity, speaks of social disparity issues besetting the immigrant population of Hawaii. If these disparities exist among the lawful residents, we cannot imagine what kind of disparities exist among those without lawful immigrant status, the same people who live in the shadows, who could not afford to come out into the open, and thus relegated to the margins of Hawaii society, unable to get the benefits of lawful residents, and pushed each day from public life until they are totally dismissed, or totally forgotten.

Cuaresma speaks of the need to “remove barriers that prohibit enrollment in schools within the University of Hawaii system for undocumented non-citizen Hawaii students.”

All told, the measure remains part of the public conversation.

It has gained opposition, with the argument that we cannot give benefits to illegal immigrants.

The bigger rebuttal to the opposition is that at one point, many of the people of the United States—and thus of Hawaii as well—have been immigrants themselves.

The debate is healthy, and we need this conversation to understand the bigger context of this measure.

At day-end, we cannot afford to have uneducated residents of Hawaii, and uneducated citizens.

At day-end, we cannot afford to waste the talents, abilities, and gifts of our undocumented young people.

Somewhere, we need to strike the balance between the requisites of our existing laws and the requisites of social justice.

A number of good things are happening one after another in this state, and a number of these concern the Ilokanos more and more.

The demographic of Filipinos in Hawaii is becoming clearer with the 2010 United States census telling us a changed scenario.

The Filipinos have overtaken the Japanese in terms of number, but not necessarily in terms of economic power, professional representation, and, political power.

A huge chunk of the Hawaii population—about one-fourth—is now of Philippine descent.

Between 85 and 90% of this chunk is of Ilokano descent.

But these numbers do not tell much about where the various peoples of the Philippines are in the state in terms of representation.

Even if historically the Ilokanos and the Visayans have come to Hawaii to help propel the state plantation economy by working in the fields rain or shine, there is not much that can be said with significance about them except for the proliferation of civic and cultural organizations that are, in some respect, duplicate each other.

The Ilokanos are notorious for this, with practically a small town sometimes having two or even three organizations, one splitting from another depending sometimes on which part the wind blows.

It is not true that the Ilokanos have dominated the Philippine scene in Hawaii.

The domination is phantasmagoric, and it is not for real.

The bluff is in the number, never in the substance.

At the University of Hawaii where Ilokano language, literature, and culture are taught, we have a hard time convincing children of Ilokanos to come and study with us, much less help us in promoting Ilokano language and culture.

The usual logic that we hear is that an Ilokano in Hawaii does not need to learn Ilokano because once you are an Ilokano, you already know everything about being Ilokano, and there is not anything that one can pick up from the Ilokano classroom, or from an Ilokano teacher.

The first person who has learned—and learned well—how to hate himself is the Ilokano in Hawaii.

It is not that this is new: in the Ilocos back in the Philippines, the same story is told over and over again.

There is no need to learn Ilokano because we already speak it, say our people down there, expressing that empty boast with an empty bluff about speaking and knowing critically and reflexively as one and the same.

The equation falls flat. It is vacuous, plain and simple.

The other logic, an extension of the same is this: ‘Adda ditoy American, lakay. No more Ilokano here, lakay.’ (‘You are already in America, old man. Ilokano is no longer needed here, old man.’)

We see here a skewed reasoning, one the UH Ilokano Program has to contend with each year.

That program has put in 40 years of service to the community as an academic program of the university, but during the last 40 years, we have only a repeat of the same logic of false cultural nationalism, and a false claim to a love for the Ilokano heritage.

In so many ways, the Ilokano in the Ilocos barrio is the same Ilokano who has transported his barrio to Hawaii, or any of those places where Ilokanos are concentrated.

Despite the 106 years of presence of the Ilokanos in Hawaii, they have yet to prove a lot if only to turn this presence as something that really makes a difference.

We have learned to use divide et tempera against each other—and all in the name of an imagined Ilocos that is as fractious as the Ilocos that has been brought here.

Somewhere, there is that almost paranoid talk about Ilokanos not trusting in another Ilokano.

Among the people—mostly the less moneyed, there is a popular talk that they share with each that it is better for them to get a non-Ilokano lawyer than an Ilokano one for reasons that have something to do with trust.

This is a perception, of course, and this perception can be wrong.

But the talk is there and it is going in circles, like a loose talk among the less moneyed Ilokanos talking about the more moneyed Ilokanos, this last one a group that pushes its members to populate banquets, to attend gatherings for raising funds for scholarships, and to participate in bangus-and-longganisa fund-raisers all in the name of the wretched and the downtrodden, in the Ilocos or in Hawaii.

At bottom, there are two kinds of Ilokanos in Hawaii: the socioeconomically able, and those who do not have the means to get to banquets every week except to put in more hours for a second job at the expense of their children, the measly pay from the second job a guarantee that the mortgage, the rent, or the electric bill is not left unpaid.

(To be continued)

Observer, April 2012

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The Center for Philippines Studies of the University of Hawaii at Manoa hosts the House of Dance Company, a group of young and creative dancers based in the Philippines. The dance company will perform at the Mamiya Theatre of the St Louis School on April 21, with an afternoon show and an evening performance. Tickets are now on sale for $15 or $10. For more information, please call Clem at 956-6086.

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The University of Hawaii Ilokano Program will hold its 40th anniversary on April 27 at Hale Koa. The anniversary celebration will also feature former instructors who have retired, formers students, and program scholars selected by a scholarship committee. The scholarship is under the auspices of donors who have helped this program, many of them without fanfare but have continued to pledge their support in educating the next generation of Ilokano scholars and cultural workers within and outside the academic community. For ticket information, please get hold of any Timpuyog officers.

In July 2011, the Fil-Am Observer published an editorial, “Dreaming of an Act,” in support of the federal bill, popularly called DREAM Act, and reintroduced in the United States Senate in May 2011, out from its slumber almost ten years after it was first introduced in August 2001.

The Observer was unequivocal then—and it has not changed its position in its support for the spirit of the proposed legislation: the giving of a window of opportunity for our young people who have known what American ethos is like, our young people who have practically lived all their life in the United States, and thus, knowing not much any other ethos, steeped as they are in the kind of style of life that they have seen in the union.

The intent of the federal bill is clear: a path to a lawful immigration status, a path that is otherwise denied to others.

The recognition that there is this invisible group of people—the immigrant youth in the margins; the immigrant youth pushed against the political periphery by reason of their non-lawful status as residents; immigrant youth that do not qualify as legal residents and yet are talented, gifted, and who have the potential to contribute to the greatness of this land; immigrant youth that are just out there but are never given the recognition due them, immigrants that are never given the public space they deserve; immigrant youth that are never given access to the resources that they need to develop themselves, get an education, and become productive residents, and hopefully, citizens—is something that must be thought about, again and again, with social justice framing our way of thinking.

Hawaii, with HB 1475, has come up with its own version of the DREAM Act.

The intents and purposes of the Hawaii legislative proposal is the same as the federal proposal: the access given to the children of non-lawful immigrants who are, by their being children of these immigrants, have been reduced as well as non-lawful immigrants even if so much of their life have been spent in Hawaii, and thus, have not known in a substantial way any other life.

Somewhere we have argued that the case of social justice as the frame through we take a look at this proposed law instead of looking at it from a narrow, even myopic ‘legalistic’ sense, might lead us a more productive debate—a more productive conversation—on this issue.

We speak here of basic rights, such as the right to education. International covenants have spoken, and reiterated, that we cannot deprive the young of this right to education.

The simple fact that the young are the same people that will hold the reins of the future leads us to a basic argument that we cannot now deprive them of the chance to prepare them so that they are able to acquire the skills they will need when it is their time to call the shots of our collective and social life.

We deprive our young of this chance to have a well-rounded view of life through education, we also deprive ourselves of our meaningful future.

We deprive our young of this chance to get the skills they need to become economically productive residents, and hopefully, citizens, we deprive Hawaii of an economically productive future.

We deprive our young of this chance to become well equipped with life-skills, we deprive this state with residents who are well trained in navigating their social life.

Anywhere we go, the argument is for the young and for a socially just and fair treatment of the young people among us.

Anywhere we go, we cannot close our eyes to the reality that we must now pave the way for a socially just and fair road for them so that in the future they will be able to pave a socially just and fair road for the others who will come after them.

This state and this country have been built upon the values of justice and fairness.